Being a sullen adolescent male given over to pointless nonconformity, I took it as a personal defeat when I finally succumbed to the obsession inducing effect of this ubiquitous image and could no longer resist the urge to rub one out in her honor.

I'm losing my hair as I write this - going through chemo now. So I identify, although my hair was never even REMOTELY comparable to hers. The sad part isn't the hair, it's the outcome.Contrarily, for me, the prognosis is excellent. But I am sad for her as she comes to the end of her journey. Touching to read about Ryan's devotion.

I'm losing my hair as I write this - going through chemo now. So I identify, although my hair was never even REMOTELY comparable to hers. The sad part isn't the hair, it's the outcome.Contrarily, for me, the prognosis is excellent. But I am sad for her as she comes to the end of her journey. Touching to read about Ryan's devotion.

Ryan and Farrah have had a long and complicated relationship, with children and breakups and reconciliations. During the Charlie's Angels years, she was with Lee Majors and they were just....golden.Then Ryan, then James Orr who beat her severely.With all she and Ryan have been through (arrests for bringing drugs to kids in prison, one son being arrested for beating another son), it is touching and telling that he is there for her now.

I hope she gets to feel the sun and watch the Malibu waves as she spends her last hours on this earth.

It is a two hour special documentary on 62 year old, Farrah Fawcett’s two and a half year battle with anal cancer.

This documentary is a personal approach at her battling with her cancer. During filming Fawcett stated that she didn’t know if anyone would ever see it, but the personal footage hit a point and it was dictated that it be seen.

The film also is narrated by the Fawcett and includes some of the former Charlie’s Angels stars close friends, Ryan O’Neal, Jaclyn Smith, Alana Stewart, Kate Jackson, Farrah’s father, Jim Fawcett, and the team of doctors that are taking care of her.

Alan Stewart was a co producer and shot most of the film. This show was made with her own video recorder and is stated as an emotional video diary, where Fawcett shares her feelings and thoughts and the treatments she has been through.

Fawcett stated that as much as she would of liked to kept her cancer a private issue, she realizes that she has a responsibility to all of those fighting their own battle and may benefit from learning about hers.

Senior Vice President of specials and alternative development, Doug Vaughan made a statement that Farrah wanted people to know about what she is facing with cancer and the treatment she takes and her personal outlook on the future. It is a moving and intimate story about Fawcett’s struggle.

I've always been a huge fan of Farah Fawcett. Her name alone triggers 70's iconic imagery that I will tell you was quite satisfactory. What a shame and O'Neill is right, cancer is an insidious enemy. Someone said Farah Fawcett will live forever, they are right.

Entropy. Always increasing if the second law of thermodynamics is correct (which seems likely). People used to think living organisms violated the second law; now we only live with Maxwell's demon. Still, if entropy values correspond to a normal distribution for living things, what's on the other side of the curve?

Much the same feelings as seeing Patrick Swayze fight cancer. There's something about seeing one of nature's golden girls or boys knocked down in slow motion just like they were anyone else that is particularly chilling. I can't quite put my finger on it.

Intellectually, I know better of course- some people after all get knocked down by fate and events beyond their control from day one, but it's almost a clock striking midnight, bell tolls for thee, no escape kind of feeling. It re-emphasizes the randomness of cruelty.

People used to think living organisms violated the second law; now we only live with Maxwell's demon.

Sorry to hear about Farrah; however the foregoing is wrong. In the first place, life doesn't violate the second law of thermodynamics, while Maxwell's demon is impossible (any such effort actually increases entropy rather decreasing it).

No, what living creatures live off of (for the most part, except for certain suboceanic volcanic vent dwelling organisms) is the power of the Sun, which as our star rushes towards positive entropy (disorder) whilst scattering vast amounts of energy in all directions, allows living agents on Earth to concentrate order (negentropy) in their immediate vicinity.

"Man, I'm so damn sick and tired of hearing about cancer. Every week it's someone new personally or publicly. Damn cancer."

Amen, brother, amen. We agree completely and passionately on one point at last.

I watched cancer destroy one of the most important people in my life. It's the worst thing you can ever imagine. Courage and comfort to Farrah and Amy (from this thread) and to anyone reading this who is facing a similar situation.

I like the old movies on TCM the best. Actors like Paul Muni, Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart arced their arc before I was even aware of their existence. They exist outside of time and mortality, or at any rate outside of my time and mortality.... I saw Debby Harry in a movie recently. She looked healthy and plump and bereft of all glamour. And she's the best case scenario for a 70's sex goddess....I never owned a TV in the seventies, and Farrah was an extremely peripheral celebrity for me. I knew her mostly from her poster. It was an excellent display of a fine nipple and big hair. She was better at tossing her tresses than, say, Fermat was at solving his math puzzles. We shared part of the journey, and now she's at the door waving goodbye. We'll all be along a little later.

This thread concerns cancer, whilst in other recent threads we've been discussing evolution — so it's worthwhile and important to observe that cancer is itself the consequence of evolution (i.e., mutation, competition, and natural selection) occurring amongst the cells of one's own body.

As a recent review article on the subject of cancer genomics in the scientific journal Nature points out:

“Cancer is an evolutionary process

“All cancers are thought to share a common pathogenesis. Each is the outcome of a process of Darwinian evolution occurring among cell populations within the microenvironments provided by the tissues of a multicellular organism. Analogous to Darwinian evolution occurring in the origins of species, cancer development is based on two constituent processes, the continuous acquisition of heritable genetic variation in individual cells by more-or-less random mutation and natural selection acting on the resultant phenotypic diversity.

“The selection may weed out cells that have acquired deleterious mutations or it may foster cells carrying alterations that confer the capability to proliferate and survive more effectively than their neighbours. Within an adult human there are probably thousands of minor winners of this ongoing competition, most of which have limited abnormal growth potential and are invisible or manifest as common benign growths such as skin moles.

“Occasionally, however, a single cell acquires a set of sufficiently advantageous mutations that allows it to proliferate autonomously, invade tissues and metastasize.”

Amy,I am a cancer survivor. Once given a few months to live, I have been cancer free for 3 years. I was happy before the ordeal, but the gratitude and the appreciation of life I developed afterward are well worth the journey. Good luck and congratulations on what you will soon consider a gift. I often feel sorry for those who have not been challenged enough to realize how great every day of this life is. Enjoy your rebirth.

Anyone else remember giving yourself a Farrah Fawcett haircut? You put your long hair into a top of the head ponytail, held the ponytail straight up, cut it at the desired length. The hair feathered out at the various lengths and formed a perfect cut. For the 70s.

It's upsetting to go bald from chemo, but man I really grew to like it. Headscarves are comfy. Earlier this spring my scalp was so itchy I was tempted to shave off all my hair.

I've had three primary cancers (no mets) and continue to have a low, stable thyroid cancer cell count in my bloodstream, but that number is probably due to the sensitivity of the test, so my thyroid oncologist is calling it NED anyway. That and a clean PET CT scan in January, very reassuring. Still, I can't donate blood because an immunosuppressed bone marrow transplant patient might get my donated blood and incubate the remnants of my cancer. So I'm reasonably cancer free, but not perfectly so.

Still, with getting the good scan results, I felt that zest for life slipping away again rapidly. I'm trying to hold on to the good things that uncertainty brings. My sky was bluer and brighter than everyone else's and I could not be bored.

Trying to hang on to that.

Contrary to being the only sober person at a party, I felt like I was the only delighted person among a bunch of bored people.

But not everyone wants Emily from Our Town hanging around. They don't like the intensity.